Environmental Policy

ENVP 522 Environmental Law 3.0 Credits

Examines administrative law applicable to the management of environmental programs, including constitutional constraints on the responsibilities of administrators and major court decisions on environmental issues. Covers due process, inspection, citizen actions, evidence and other matters.

ENVP 552 Political Economy of Climate Change 3.0 Credits

Climate change is one of the most debated issues in recent decades. It is increasingly accepted that climate change is one of the major threats for the stability and development of human society. Without going into the depths of geoscience and historical climatology, this course analyzes the evidence of climate change, the causes of it, the politics of controversies about climate change, and the proposals to deal with it.

ENVP 555 Cities and Climate Change 3.0 Credits

Climate change poses a host of challenges for American cities, ranging from what trees to plant, to increases in heat-related deaths, to critical infrastructure protection in the face of increasingly severe weather events. And it is an open question as to whether American city governments have the organizational capacity, resources, and political will, to engage in the type of long-term planning that climate change will require. What are the most likely effects that climate change will have on different American cities? What should American cities be doing, and what have American cities done so far, to prepare themselves for climate change? What responsibilities do cities have to try to mitigate the causes of climate change? What factors likely determine American cities’ responses to climate change?.

ENVP 572 Environmental Policy 3.0 Credits

This interdisciplinary seminar investigates how interests and ideas interact in environmental policymaking. Students will explore how conceptual and political innovations play out across several environmental issues, including wildlife management, energy development, and the regulation of environmental risks.

ENVP 575 Environmental Justice 3.0 Credits

This seminar course provides an introduction to Environmental Justice. At the end of this course, students should be able to demonstrate their understanding of the concept of environmental justice/injustice; methods of environmental justice research; environmental health issues, including the latest scientific advances, and critiques of environmental epidemiology and knowledge gaps; theories of the development of environmental injustice; an overview of the deficiencies of the regulatory and legal remedies for environmental justice in the U.S.; the unequal impact disasters; the neoliberal global economy as a source for environmental injustice; and emerging issues currently addressed by social movements for environmental justice.